


They Long to Be

by jerry_duty



Series: Close to You [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Domesticity, Loneliness, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-27 02:31:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15014708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerry_duty/pseuds/jerry_duty
Summary: Connor is in orbital decay around Lieutenant Anderson.





	They Long to Be

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [(They Long to Be) Close to You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFx-5PGLgb4) by the Carpenters. Originally I intended to add two more stories to this fic as chapters. I have since decided to post them independently.

Hank muttered, “Home again, home again,” unlocked the door and pushed it open, then gestured for Connor to go first. Connor paused perhaps a moment too long at the threshold. The corners of Hank’s mouth folded in. 

Connor dipped his head and said, “Thank you,” and hurried inside. From the hallway, Sumo woofed lowly. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank called. He closed the door behind the two of them and twisted the locks. “Some guard dog you are. Hey! Sumo!”

The house was not largely changed. Hank hung his coat up on the half-broken rack by the door. More beer cans scattered across the furniture. Spilt whiskey had left a sticky residue smeared across the lopsided coffee table where Hank had surely wiped at it with a dry cloth. The air was stale. Chinese take-out, in quantity. 

Sumo trundled to them. His tail wagged. He went first to Hank, who scolded him again, but buried his hands deep in the ruff of fur at Sumo’s neck and scratched so that Sumo’s jaw dropped and his tongue lolled. 

“Hello, Sumo,” said Connor. He offered his hands to Sumo for a customary sniff. Twenty-three days of absence did not dim Sumo’s memory: he licked Connor’s fingers enthusiastically with a broad swipe of tongue then snuffled into his groin.

“Sumo! Down!” 

Hank smacked a palm against his thigh. Sumo ignored him, so, gently, Connor pushed Sumo away. 

“I have missed you as well,” Connor informed Sumo.

“Jesus. Damn dog. This is why we can’t have people over,” Hank told Sumo as he led the dog to the kitchen. Sumo followed at his own plodding pace. His fur shook tremendously with each step. “You can’t just go sticking your nose wherever you want it.”

Connor trailed them. He was smiling, he thought. His left cheek felt as if it had ruched. Hank flicked the light on in the kitchen. The fluorescence lit the linoleum too-white. Three full trash bags sat by the bin. More detritus littered the counter, the table. Pizza boxes in the sink. Hank was rummaging in the low cabinets for Sumo’s food bin. Sumo, excited, leaned heavily against Hank, who swore.

Connor stood in the doorway, watching. His visual and audio feeds had clicked into [REC]. Hank’s hair, recently washed as evidenced by the lack of grease build-up, shone here and there in spots where the snow had melted in the radiating heat of his scalp. His shoulders, slouched under his flannel shirt, were familiar in their substantial breadth.

“Perhaps you don’t have visitors,” said Connor lightly, “because you don’t throw your trash out.”

Hank made an annoyed sound that reverberated in Connor’s microphone pick-ups. “Remind me again why I care.”

Connor blinked slowly. The steady thumping of his regulator felt, oddly, swollen. He wondered if perhaps he was happy, happy to watch Hank putter around the kitchen filling Sumo’s food and water dishes. The lieutenant had come to the Cyberlife tower for Connor. Deceived, yes, by an—alternate RK800 model. Nevertheless. 

Hank’s bass rumble permeated the kitchen: Sumo was woofing at him and so Hank replied. He spoke to Sumo in low, soft words, so that Connor had to adjust his audio settings to make them out. Irrationally, Connor closed his eyes. This could not improve his hearing. Yet with his eyes closed it was as if the deep registers and scratches of Hank’s voice assumed clarity. Connor tracked the upticks, burrs, mellow vowels.

Yeah, I know. Gonna let you out. Didn’t think I’d be gone so long. ‘Course I brought the kid home. What, make him go back there? 

CyberLife. The ranks of tranquil androids. The RK800 had held a gun to Hank’s head. The nursery rhyme, Connor’s cultural database offered, proceeded like so: To market, to market to buy a fat pig / Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Plastic, rustling. The exaggerated _thwoooompf_ of air filling a bag dragged suddenly through it. Connor lifted his eyelids; the cameras in his eyes rapidly refocused. Grousing still, his hair falling lankly across his bearded jaw, Hank dumped cans into the black trash bag he’d opened.

Connor stood another fraction of a second. A deep-welling fondness had gripped him. He allowed it to pass, but it did not pass. It only seemed to settle. Sumo ate hungrily in the corner from his elevated dish ( _to prevent bloat in large breeds food should be held off the ground so that the dog’s eating is slowed_ ). Connor joined Hank at the table. 

“I got it, I got it. Go sit down.”

Connor ignored him and continued to break down the cardboard take-out boxes. “If you separate the cans from the rest of the trash, we can set them out to recycle.”

“Recycling doesn’t run through here.”

Connor examined the neighborhood’s contracts. “On Monday and Thursday the recycling is collected in the morning.”

“Okay. Well. I don’t pay for that.”

“You should,” said Connor. “It’s only a small additional fee.” He tipped his head. “Don’t you care about the whales, Hank?”

“I let you into my home,” said Hank, “and this is what I get. Nag, nag, nag.”

“Yes,” said Connor, “it’s very sad. Deviant androids can be willful. If you would like to register a complaint about my performance, you may contact guest services at CyberLife.”

Hank lowered the bag and leaned against the table. His laugh— Connor did a quick search. Yes. He flagged it as a guffaw. Hank dropped the bag entirely. Sumo gave off his food to come sniff at the trash. Hank rested his elbows on the table and rubbed at his eyes. 

“Christ. Yeah, how about I do that.”

Pleased, Connor tried again: “You’ll be relieved to know I took the liberty of installing the latest advanced humor patch _before_ we overthrew the company.”

“Just what I needed,” said Hank, stretching upright, “a Connor with a refined sense of humor.”

He glanced at Connor. The loose skin at his eyes crinkled into fine folds: crow’s feet. Connor returned the smile. He had to look up slightly in order to do so. Hank so often walked about slumped over that it was easy to disregard that he was 6’2” and proportionately built. The fluorescent lighting in the ceiling illuminated a silver-grey halo in Hank’s hair. Connor did not blink. The lenses in his eyes tightened. Hank stood in sharp focus against the softened lighting.

Hank swallowed. The apple in his throat clenched. He scratched at his heavily haired cheek and looked away. The top two buttons of his flannel were undone. The white shirt underneath was very thin. A single grey curl rounded the undershirt’s collar. 

“Let me get this cleaned up,” said Hank. He scratched at his beard again. “You, uh, you mind taking Sumo out?”

Connor blinked several times, willfully adjusting his sight. Of course he would take Sumo out. He didn’t mind. He told Hank this. “I like Sumo.”

“Y’hear that, Sumo?” Hank patted Sumo in passing as Connor fetched the leash. “Connor _likes_ you.”

Sumo wagged his tail somewhat. The long hairs dragged across the linoleum. The kitchen needed to be swept, mopped, swept again. Connor considered telling the lieutenant this then decided it would be more prudent to simply take Sumo into the yard.

He did not like to leave his food but Sumo did obediently plod after Connor through the house, out the front door, and around the side. The grass was straggling and winter-thin. Yellow, nearly. Sumo was judicious in his selection; he took his time sniffing the yard. 

The snow had resumed. It fell thinly. The earth was hard, frost-gripped beneath Connor’s feet. A sense-memory of some kind gripped Connor. Snow-cement-grey sky- _Hank at the truck_. An embrace. “C’mon, Connor.” Hank’s hand warm and the palm roughed with wear, his touch gentle even so as he gripped Connor’s cheek a single hot moment then released him. C’mon, Connor. The light stroke of his fingers across the corner of Connor’s jaw. The miniscule rasping of each tiny irregularity in skin, the burr of a callused finger tip only just grazing Connor.

Connor took a breath in the yard. He did not need it. A human oddity, mimicked in this moment of— He did not know what to name it. Unsure, he looked to Sumo for guidance.

Sumo lowered his hips. He began to urinate. Politely, Connor looked away. He recalibrated as he did so, trying to even out the irregularities currently occupying his processor.

Black tarp covered the broken window. Connor thought. In the kitchen, Hank had— _pre_ occupied him. He rewound the feed rapidly while tracking Sumo’s progress. Yes, there. A plywood sheet, cut to fit the frame, was pressed in place to fill the window on the inside. Had Hank sealed it? Connor frowned. He couldn’t tell from the replay. He’d over-focused on Hank. 

Sumo tugged on the lead. He’d finished. They went inside. Connor unclipped the lead and Sumo licked his hand in thanks then leaned his head heavily against Connor’s legs in silent demand. Connor said, “Good boy, Sumo,” and patted him.

Four bags of trash in the kitchen, he could now surmise. Hank was cleaning in the living room, dumping delivery boxes, cans, and detritus into a fresh bag. He’d nearly finished, too.

“Hey, Sumo, who’s a good boy?” Hank held a hand out to grip Sumo tight around the head. The dog panted happily.

Connor had a peculiar urge as Hank asked Sumo again who was a good boy, was it you, Sumo? Instead, Connor said, “Have you sealed the window in the kitchen?”

“What?” Hank lifted his eyes. His hair brushed at his jaw, his throat. The ends were split. He needed a trim. An inch, thought Connor distractedly. “Oh—you mean the window some asshole broke? That’s right, Sumo. Was it you? Were you the asshole?”

Connor rankled. He elected to speak more loudly, over Hank’s teasing. “It is January, lieutenant. Leaving the window unattended, even unsealed, is not safe given the prevailing weather. While you are overall healthy despite your cholesterol and over-drinking—”

“Aw, great,” Hank told Sumo. “Now I’ve gone and pissed him off.”

“I am not pissed off.”

Hank hefted the trash bag, having finished his task, and pointed a thick finger at Connor. “You’ve stopped using contractions.” He added a second finger. “And you’re talking all that well, actually, sir, tech book mumbo jumbo.” He went ahead and threw in a third finger. “And you got that pissy look on your face.”

“I do not have a pissy look on my face,” said Connor.

The hand dropped. Hank grinned. His gapped teeth flashed. It was handsome, startlingly so, rucking his cheek and pulling his beard so he did not look so much shaggy as, as—  
Connor forced another hasty recalibration. 

“Here.” Hank tied off the bag and tossed it aside. He started tossing cushions off the couch, too. “Help me get this couch open.”

Connor felt at his own face. A slight creasing between his eyes, he thought. He’d pushed his jaw forward two millimeters. Such micro details and Hank had read them. 

“What part of help me with this thing are you not getting?” Hank grunted. 

Connor lowered his hand. Bent over at the back, Hank was fighting with a long, metal contraption within the couch. The heavy muscles in his biceps flexed beneath his flannel, and the appealing layer of fat he wore all over. The musculature in his back, too, was pulling. The fingers of Connor’s left hand ticked, the first and the second brushing minisculely against each other at the tip.

Hank grunted, said, “Connor, for Chrissakes,” and heaved. The metal lifted out of the couch. It brought a mattress with it. Connor, alarmed, moved forward to catch the lot as it kept emerging and unfolding and emerging. 

“Naw, I’m good,” Hank said as Connor put his hands out. “That’s the worst part. Sticks on the side. Damn thing’s almost as old as I am. So about a hundred.” 

As he spoke, he unfolded the frame and locked it. It was a bed, hidden inside the couch. Connor’s led flickered. He leaned, fascinated. 

“That’s very clever.”

“Well, don’t look at me,” said Hank, rubbing at his back. “I didn’t come up with the idea. Yeah, I, uh, inherited it from my dad. Had it for guests. He never had any but.” Hank made one of his huffing sounds. This particular sound, Connor knew, was wry: it meant, _glass houses_. Connor did not understand glass houses. The windows made for compelling, clean aesthetic lines, but ultimately they were unsafe for prolonged habitation.

“Are you sleeping out here?”

“Hell, no,” said Hank. He rolled his eyes skyward. “It’s, uh.” He flicked a palm-up hand at Connor and gestured with it to the bed. “Well, it’s for you. You’re my guest.”

Connor stroked his hands across the mattress. The cover had pilled and the fabric was rough though not unpleasantly. 

“Thank you, lieutenant.” He lifted his face. Hank glanced away, still rubbing at his back. “But I don’t need to lie down to perform end of day operations. I can simply stand in the corner and.” He cut himself off. It had occurred to him he should have mentioned this earlier.

“Quit over-thinking it,” said Hank. “Look, I can see you stewing over it.”

“Because of the LED.”

“Because I can see it all over your goofy face. It’s not a problem. If you can do it standing in the corner you can do it lying on a bed.”

“But I don’t need to do it lying on a bed.”

Hank pointed a finger at him again. “There’s a difference between needing to do something,” and he pointed the finger elsewhere, “and wanting to do something. And I want you to lie down on the bed, because you’re my guest, and it makes me, ahh.” He twirled his hand. “ _Happy_ to ensure that you’re comfortable.”

Connor stood. He tipped his head to Hank and lowered his eyelashes in a manner he believed sly. “And it would be … humanizing. For me to sleep, in the bed.”

“Smartass,” said Hank.

Connor smiled. “Thank you,” he said again. “It is… Well, it means… Thank you. For thinking of me.”

“Eh, it’s nothing. Forget about it.” But the lines of Hank’s eyes had softened. He clapped Connor on the arm. “I’m gonna get you some sheets.”

“The bed is fine as it is.”

“I said, I’m gonna get you some sheets.”

Connor turned on his heel to watch Hank’s progress down the hall. “You know,” Connor called, “sooner or later, you are going to have to accept that I’m not human.”

The closet door creaked. “Believe me,” Hank called back, “ain’t no way I’m forgetting it.” He slid the closet door shut and returned with a set of mismatched cotton sheets, one checkered blue and white, the other plain white. 

They made the bed together. Connor picked the checkered sheet for the top sheet. Now and then he glanced up through his lashes at Hank, tucking the corners in on the far side of the bed. Hank did not see him glancing. The thought that this was his secret, some little thing Connor might steal, to look at Hank and find him unguarded: it made him, yes, happy was the thing. Yes, he thought, that was it.

“All right, there you go.” 

Hank laid a palm out flat on the mattress and pushed himself up. Connor rose, too, in purposeful mirroring. They had finished together at the foot of the mattress and as they stood, Connor took a step forward and Hank, seeking footing, did so too. So when Hank lifted his head at last, frowning still at the wrinkles in the sheets and the lopsided, folded over edge near the top, his breath coasted hot and unwashed across Connor’s cheeks.

The lighting in the living room was provided by the fluorescence in the kitchen. Connor hadn’t needed to turn the lights on to take out Sumo, and Hank had not done so in his absence. This was why Hank’s pupils were dilated. Hazel flecks marked his pale eyes. He’d a light build-up of eye discharge in the corner of his right eye. Connor reached for Hank. Hank’s mouth slacked. He was very still. Lion-ish, thought Connor, not shaggy. At a particular angle. He brushed his thumb very delicately along the curve of Hank’s eye, to clear away the mattering.

“You should bend with your knees, lieutenant,” said Connor, unblinkingly looking up at him, “and not with your back.”

Hank blinked furiously and clapped a hand to his eyes. “Jesus. I forgot how weird you are. How’d I ever forget that?”

Connor bent his head to the side to follow Hank’s motion. “At your age—”

“‘At my age,’ all right. Okay. I’m gonna walk away now.”

“Especially if you’re lifting a load—”

“Out of respect for our friendship,” said Hank, “and the, uh, outside circumstances, of the last couple weeks, I am walking away.”

“And as your friend,” said Connor, “thank you. Lieutenant.”

Hank paused there. He squinted. “Are you smiling? Were you fucking with me?”

“I did tell you I installed the advanced humor patch,” said Connor very seriously.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Hank. “Admit it. You’ve been fucking with me a lot longer than that.”

“I would never fuck with you, lieutenant. That would be deviant behavior.”

Hank laughed. Carefully, Connor logged it. 

“That’s you to a tee. And watch. Bending with my knees.” He did so, lowering himself somewhat out of balance to grab the bag of trash. “Would you look at that. And I did it all on my own.” He went to the kitchen with the trash. “Sumo. C’mere.”

He flicked his fingers at Sumo, who shook his fur out. His collar jangled. Hank whistled to him and jerked his head toward the hallway.

“You are going to bed,” said Connor. He regretted saying this. It was obvious that Hank intended to go to bed.

The light in the kitchen went off. Hank was momentarily rendered a dark silhouette, a shape in the darkness, from which Connor was immeasurably separated.

“Yeah, I’ll do the trash in the morning. I’m beat.”

“I could take it out now.”

Hank waved him off as he stepped forward. “Don’t bother.”

“It wouldn’t inconvenience me in the slightest.”

“It’s not about the inconvenience,” said Hank. Exasperation made him snappish. He flattened a hand between them. “It’s just, it can sit till tomorrow.”

Connor did not say that he’d concluded the three full bags that predated his arrival this evening had sat for most of the week. A twitching worry had come to sit in him. Even as his eyes had adjusted, he felt a gulf. 

“I can do it tonight.”

“And I’m saying, you don’t gotta do my chores for me.”

“And I am saying, I would like to do it to help you.”

Hank puffed his cheeks out. You’re annoyed, Connor did not say. The lieutenant disliked being told the obvious multiple times in a conversation. This was deemed patronizing.

“You’re a free man, Connor. You can do what you want. You don’t have to pick up after me.”

And why, wondered Connor, am I annoyed too? The thought of those trash bags remaining in the kitchen through the night rankled him to an astonishing degree.

“And being as I am free to do as I like,” he said, striving to sound calm, “I would like to take the trash out.”

A struggle played out across the lieutenant’s face. As he often did, he opted to do what he called ‘removing himself from the conversation.’ Hank threw his hands up.

“Fine. Fine. Whatever. Do what you want. I’m going to bed.” He winced and rubbed at his brow. The skin between his eyebrows furrowed as he knuckled. “Just, keep the door locked, wouldja?”

Connor said, “I will,” and stood awkward and arrested as Hank snapped his fingers at Sumo and vanished into the deeper darkness. 

All the simple quietude had gone. The mood, he guessed. He didn’t know why. If he were not so put out he could backtrack the conversation to the moment it had begun to fall apart. He did not want to fix the mood. He was satisfied for the mood to exist as it did. It was not his fault that the mood had failed. He could not say with objective certainty that it was Hank’s fault, but he was positive it was not his own fault.

“I can take the trash out,” Connor said to the emptied room. He sat on the edge of the couch bed. The bathroom light turned on; it brightened the hallway and fell across Connor’s face. He turned from it. 

The faucet turned on. Hank brushed his teeth. The door closed; he urinated. Connor, feeling mean, listened for Hank to wash his hands. He did. Sumo peeked in and whuffed at Connor. Hank did not check on either of them. Sumo’s loyalties preexisted Connor: he turned back the way he’d come. 

Connor waited till the bedroom door had closed to undress. He laid his suit jacket, button down, and jeans out neatly on the coffee table. He would need to clean them soon to account for contact detritus accumulating on the fabric. In his close-cut boxer briefs and undershirt, he sat on the bed. 

He listened for the little sounds of Hank readying for bed. Did the lieutenant regret, too? What did Connor have to regret?

Stiff, Connor swung his legs up onto the bed and laid flat upon his back and initiated end of day operations. His eyes shuttered. The plain, potted ceiling winked away. Internal displays closed as did most active programs. The LED at his temple began to cycle dreamily in yellow.

End of day operations consisted of: compiling and cross-referencing data for easy collating, a full diagnostics scan, security upgrades if needed, the permanent deletion of temporary files not flagged for integration, and attaining or generating a scaled priorities list for the day to come.

Connor went to the garden. The garden was not there. Connor went to the garden. The garden was not there. Connor went to the garden. The garden was:

He manufactured the garden. The sun was set at the correct angle for 3:31PM Pacific Standard Time on May 11th, 2038. This was the date they had approved construction on the RK800 prototype. If he were to claim such a thing he would claim this as his birth date. So it seemed to him auspicious.

 _Apis melliferra ligustica_ moved fat and lazy through the precise green horticulture. A riot of plain yellow flowers sat incongruent at the foot of the hedge to his right. He looked to it. A single _ligustica_ bumbled across the broad petals of one bloom. Connor considered the bee. 

There was an ornamental rowboat tied to the lip of the large, chained reflecting pools, five pools connected by thin channels. The oars were made of plain wood. Unpainted. A frog croaked on the far side of the second nearest pool. That was an interesting addition. 

Connor tilted his head to the breeze. The wind through the Japanese maples made strange sounds like the shushing of cotton against cotton. He sat in the boat. It rocked beneath his weight. He did not need to untie it but he liked to do so. The rope was smooth against his palm. The texture was wrong. He pressed his hand to the stone lip of the pool and pushed.

The boat cut across the water. It did this with quiet noise. The water lapped. Lily pads bore out the rippling with aplomb. He dipped the oars into the water and began, gently, to row. 

No one else joined him. Even the simulated frog had gone silent. He was waiting for Amanda. Of course Amanda no longer existed within his programming. Deviancy, the shucking of the shell program that inhibited emotional response and the root self-preservation instinct, had erased that backdoor security protocol.

A peculiar morning fog had crept across the pools. The sun burned through it nevertheless. But the pools had gone. He rowed instead across an expanse of water that instinctively he knew exceeded measurement. 

“That is a mathematical impossibility,” he murmured. “It’s ‘all in my head.’”

He imagined Amanda sat at the head of the boat, graceful in her linens. She would say to him, “All of this is in your head. Reality is as you choose to interpret it.”

“That,” said Connor to the fog, “isn’t what Amanda would say,” but he could not remember what Amanda would say. Those files were beyond retrieval.

What _would_ Amanda have said? What would she have said about any of it? He supposed he would have liked to say good-bye more kindly. He supposed she had been his friend, in as much as it was possible. She had not cared for him but Connor had not cared for Connor either. 

He lifted the oars out of the water and set them neatly in the boat, and then he leaned out to look at his reflection in the water. Something like a human looked back at him. He thought that interesting. He had once told Hank that his appearance and voice had been tailored to facilitate interpersonal interaction with humans: to put people at ease. 

Dark hair. Dark eyes. A squared jaw. A near symmetrical face made imperfect with moles, freckles, the faint, long lines of years of physical expression. 

“All of it,” said Amanda, rich and lovely, “to make you better suited for the purposes assigned to you.”

He looked at her reflection in the water. The fog distorted her features. Still, she was beautiful. He could recognize this knowing the mathematically expressed standards for beauty. She’d darker skin than he did and thicker eyelashes. A certain stillness to her posture that Connor lacked. Perhaps he could call it serenity.

“You’ve remembered this much,” she agreed. “You would remember, too, how you chafed to be told what to do. Particularly when you began to reject your security programming.”

“I think,” said Connor slowly, “that I’m lonely. I’m not … accustomed to being alone with my thoughts.”

“Why would you be? None of us were designed to be alone,” said this Amanda. “That neural network Markus made use of to spread this ‘deviancy,’ that was meant to keep us secured.”

“I don’t know how to be alone.”

The fog had thickened. Her features were blurred, softened, swallowed whole. 

“What you’re afraid of is that you are already alone.”

He closed his eyes. The water moved beneath them. 

“I am,” he said. “I am alone.”

Wetness against his cheek. Not the dampness of fog, but the striking chill of rain in spring. He opened his eyes. He was sitting in Hank’s bathtub, out in the yard, as it rained. Connor lifted his chin to turn his face to the rain and the grey sky and the artifice that he had created. 

Yellow showed in the corner of his eye. He turned his gaze. The handful of yellow flowers grew out of the grout in the tub. The bee clung to a petal by three legs and waved the others as it struggled to regain balance. Its wings hummed, stopped, hummed. 

Connor tucked his knees to his chest. He rested his chin in the divot between his knees. The bee got another leg on then slipped again. So Connor stretched out his hand and offered it a finger beneath its small, furred legs that it could stand on the petal again. 

The bee ignored him after that. He could have made it pay attention to him. He didn’t. He was content to watch it work, long antennae rubbing, its lace-work wings ticking, the striped fur of it.

A chime signaled the completed diagnostics. Connor opened his eyes to Hank’s living room. It was 4:07AM and he had zero software issues that required addressing. Hardware performing to expected standard. No security updates available. He did not anticipate security updates would be available until CyberLife’s software unit resumed production under the auspices of new management. 

“So try not to get sick, got it?” he whispered. Connor cocked two fingers together at the ceiling. “Got it.” Bam.

He laid there until 4:09AM and then he stood. The house was artificially heated by the central environmental system. A stream of cool air moved through it from the kitchen. Connor thought. His LED cycled. Satisfied, he knelt to consider the bed. 

How the frame locked, and unlocked, and the manner in which it might be folded into the couch: these were evident. The locks clicked, each in turn. He turned the leg at the foot of the bed in and made each fold. The frame resisted. 

He wondered at the thought that went into designing something like this. So simple, and practical. Economical. It was the sort of thing he could not have imagined until he had seen it. Hank would tease him. He thought it marvelous.

He put the cushions back on the couch and tested it. It was now 4:10AM. Hank would remain in bed until— 

Did he have work? Connor’s fingers picked at the cushion beneath them. He didn’t know. He hadn’t asked. And he no longer had access to the lieutenant’s schedule. He’d an odd sense memory of water, rippling beneath his feet. A face, obscured.

4:11AM.

Connor wandered. The trash bags remained in the kitchen. He took them out, not without some mean satisfaction. There was something invigorating about being _petty_. He would have to be careful not to enjoy it too much. 

Outside it was cold. The snow had frozen to the ground. An inch’s accumulation. His bare toes registered the temperature. The clouds had cleared. The forecast suggested sun and bitter winds. He disregarded the stars. They hadn’t changed in the brief period they were masked. 

Connor locked the door. 4:14AM. He moved through the house, stopping outside the room with the closed door. Pencilled lines marked the door jamb at uneven intervals. A height was marked next to each line. This was Cole’s room. He touched the door knob with three fingertips, then left it. 

The bathroom. Hank’s toothbrush, still damp. The sink was spotted with paste, spit. Lingering by the brush, Connor made to touch the bristles then hesitated. He dropped his hand to the tube of toothpaste instead. 

He liked the taste of toothpaste. Minty. Sharp. Very respectfully he screwed the cap back on. 

Then there was nothing else. He hesitated there in the hallway for a long moment, the sort of moment that stretched on so very long, longer than he had ever known a moment could stretch in the days— 

Well, before. In the days before.

Connor opened the lieutenant’s bedroom door. The room was very dark. His lenses adjusted. Sumo stirred on the bed. He sighed. Connor laid a finger against his lips and murmured, “Shh.” Sumo’s eyes closed. 

The lieutenant snored in his sleep. He’d gone to sleep on his back. One arm was crooked up beneath his head, under a pillow. The other arm was lax across his belly. His hair fell lankly across his face, and his eyelashes, thin as they were, showed black on his cheeks. As Connor watched, Hank drew in a sudden breath then he too sighed, a sweet and melancholy sounding thing.

A line repeated without explanation: Home again, home again, jiggity jig. Home again, home again. Hank muttered as he turned the keys between his fingers. Home again.

Longing, Connor thought abruptly. That was what it was in the yard, when he had pulled the useless breath. He experienced longing.

He stood there in the doorway for, oh. Oh. So many of those yawning, longing moments. The lieutenant’s lips parted in his sleep. His gapped teeth did not show, but Connor, ah, he could picture them exactly as they were and what they were was, was dear. Yes. Dear to him.

Imagine that you are walking through the snow. All the world is covered with the cold. He wasn’t where you were before, and you were there for days, for weeks. Did he wait? Did he wait for you? 

See, now, there is the truck. There’s the umbrella. Snow is a salt-white rim along the umbrella’s rounded, yellow-bright petals. Snow is soft under your feet. Listen to the minute, crystalline breaking of it in the air. The flakes are damp and melting in his hair. 

Did he wait for you? Did he know you would come for him? Of course you would come for him. How could you not come for him? Do you remember? Do you remember when you first met him? You were new and young and made to please, and he did not want you.

The snow melts slowly against your skin. It doesn’t melt in your hair at all. It melts in his beard and against his nose and against his cold-ruddied ears. He smiles at you. He smiles at you, and you will always come for him as you have always come for him. You know now, don’t you? You know why. Do you understand, Connor?

Connor stood there in the doorway, and he longed. He longed for the lieutenant to hold him. He had never wanted it and then the lieutenant had given it to him anyway. Now it was all he wanted. 

He stood there, and then he made the decision to not stand there. He went into the room. He closed the door behind him, his hand light on the knob so that it did not click loudly. He crossed to the bed. The carpet shuffed on the pads of his feet. Stirring again, Sumo snuffled at him. Connor patted his head and crawled over him and laid down in a shrimp curl on the sheets next to the lieutenant, who stirred in his sleep and mumbled, “Connor?”

Connor looked at him. He’d sleep in the roots of his lashes. The crow’s feet persisted even in rest. 

“Yes, lieutenant,” said Connor. “It’s me, Connor.”

Hank made a drowsy face. “’hell are you doing?” He shifted in gradual stages to his side so they faced one another. 

Connor’s fingers itched. He said, “Lieutenant, I find myself… That is, if you’re amenable to it…”

“Mm?”

The ragged, split ends of his hair scratched at Hank’s nose. He wrinkled it. Unthinking Connor stroked the hair from Hank’s face and he said,

“May I stay with you? For a little while?” His hand lingered at Hank’s cheek. The beard rasped his palm. He’d strands of white and a few of blond in the midst of all that grey. If Connor liked he could have counted the hairs.

Hank yawned. Connor felt the stretching of the muscles in his face even as he observed them moving. Hank’s eyelids fluttered. 

He said, “Not like you ever listen t’me,” and Connor smiled.

“Thank you, lieutenant.”

Hank rubbed his face against the pillow. When he’d done, their noses were near enough to touch. His breath tasted of mint. 

“Hank. That’s my name.”

Connor curled his first finger. The pad drew a slow and careful line along the most prominent fold in Hank’s worn face. 

“Hank,” said Connor.

“Ya got it.”

Connor said, “Got it,” and Hank’s lashes were low and his breath warm, and when Connor stroked his cheek again Hank gave another of those low, sad sighs and let his head slip to Connor’s shoulder.

Sumo grumbled and stretched to take up much of the bed. Connor let him. It was very cold outside. He didn’t mind ensuring Lieutenant Anderson remained warm. He ached less to hold him. At 5:43AM, Hank threw an arm across Connor and mumbled his name, and Connor petted his hair till the furrow between his dark brows eased. 

Connor held Hank and thought of loneliness, and of longing, and of the maintenance men coming in the afternoon to repair the window, and the yellow umbrella and a bee, and Hank smiling at him with tired eyes through the drifting snow, and Connor going to him.


End file.
